R Clarke - The Complete Songs

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Label: Signum

Cat No: SIGCD940

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 7th November 2025

Works

Clarke, Rebecca

A Dream
A Psalm of David, When He Was in the Wilderness of Judah
Ah for the Red Spring Rose
Aufblick
Away, Delights!
Binnorie: A Ballad
Chanson
Come, Oh Come, My Life's Delight
Cradle Song
Das Ideal
Daybreak
Down by the Salley Gardens
Durch die Nacht
Du
Eight O'Clock
God Made a Tree
Greeting
Hymn to Pan
Infant Joy
Irish Country Songs (3)
June Twilight
Klage
Lethe
Magna est veritas
Manche Nacht
Nach einem Regen
Nacht fur Nacht
Oh, Dreaming World
Oh Welt
Old English Songs (3)
One That is Ever Kind
Return of Spring
Shiv, Who Poured the Harvest
Shy One
Sleep
Spirits
Stimme im Dunkeln
Take, O Take Those Lips Away
Tears
The Aspidistra
The Cherry-Blossom Wand
The Cloths of Heaven
The Color of Life
The Donkey
The Moving Finger Writes
The Seal Man
Tiger, Tiger
Up-hill
Vergissmeinnicht
Vor der Ture schlaft der Baum
Wandrers Nachtlied
Weep You No More, Sad Fountains

Artists

Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano)
Nicholas Phan (tenor)
Anna Tilbrook (piano)
Gweneth Ann Rand (soprano)
Roderick Williams (baritone)
Max Baillie (violin)
Karen Gomyo (violin)
Erin Keefe (violin)
Paul Neubauer (viola)
Mark Kosower (cello)

Works

Clarke, Rebecca

Artists

About

A collection of all the songs written by the British-American composer Rebecca Clarke.

Rebecca Clarke wrote vocal chamber music over the whole of her career, from Wandrers Nachtlied, her first completed composition, in 1903, through her overhaul of Lethe, in the winter of 1976-77.

Taken together, her songs and duets constitute one of the greatest and most distinctive contributions to the vocal repertoire of the twentieth century.

Much of Clarke’s vocal music has been recorded, but the present album brings it all together under one roof, including a complete survey of the early songs (only Tears was previously recorded), and first recordings of Weep You No More, Sad Fountains, in its original solo version, plus the epic Binnorie: A Ballad. There are 22 world-premiere recordings in total.

Sound/Video

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1

Greeting
2

Shy One
3

A Dream
4

The Cloths of Heaven
5

One That Is Ever Kind (‘The Folly of Being Comforted’)
6

Down by the Salley Gardens (version for voice and violin)
7

June Twilight
8

The Seal Man (arr. for voice, viola and piano)
9

Oh, Dreaming World
10

Up-hill
11

Sleep
12

Spirits
13

Shiv, Who Poured the Harvest (‘Shiv and the Grasshopper’)
14

Chanson
15

Three Old English Songs: 1. It was a Lover and his Lass
16

Three Old English Songs: 2. Phillis on the new made Hay
17

Three Old English Songs: 3. The Tailor and the Mouse
18

Vor der Türe schläft der Baum
19

Du
20

Oh Welt
21

Nach einem Regen
22

Vergissmeinnicht
23

Das Ideal
24

The Cherry-Blossom Wand
25

The Donkey
26

The Aspidistra
27

Ah for the Red Spring Rose
28

God Made a Tree
29

Binnorie: A Ballad (arr. for voice, viola and piano)
30

Weep You No More, Sad Fountains
31

Come, Oh Come, My Life’s Delight
32

A Psalm of David, When He Was in the Wilderness of Judah
33

Magna est veritas
34

Take, O Take Those Lips Away
35

Cradle Song
36

Infant Joy
37

Tiger, Tiger
38

Eight O’Clock
39

The Moving Finger Writes
40

Lethe
41

Return of Spring
42

Tears
43

The Color of Life
44

Klage
45

Manche Nacht
46

Aufblick
47

Durch die Nacht
48

Wandrers Nachtlied
49

Stimme im Dunkeln
50

Nacht für Nacht
51

Daybreak
52

Down by the Salley Gardens (version for voice and piano)
53

Three Irish Country Songs: 1. I know my love
54

Three Irish Country Songs: 2. I know where I’m goin’
55

Three Irish Country Songs: 3. As I was going to Ballynure
56

Away, Delights!
57

Hymn to Pan

Europadisc Review

Of the various women composers whose music has attracted long overdue attention in recent years, one of the most consistently rewarding and naturally gifted is Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979). Born in Harrow to an American father and German mother, she weathered a difficult home life, studying at both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music (where she became one of Stanford’s star composition students). Though she had to withdraw from both institutions before completing her studies, she found her niche as a professional viola player – one of the most accomplished of her time. A life of touring and an at times turbulent personal life left little time for composition, and in later years her output trailed off altogether.

Today, Clarke is best known for her instrumental and chamber music, not least her celebrated Viola Sonata of 1919. During her lifetime, however, several of her songs became well known, including The Seal Man (1922) to a text by John Masefield, and The Tiger (1929–1933), a setting of William Blake’s famous poem. A handful of her songs appear with frequency on disc (recently, for example, on Golda Schultz’s album ‘This Be Her Verse’), but the vast majority are unknown. Thanks are due, then, to Signum Classics for collecting Clarke’s complete songs on a generously filled double album, with mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Anna Tilbrook doing the honours with assistance from soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, baritone Roderick Williams and others.

What strikes the listener first is the variety of settings, with texts ranging from Shakespeare, Calderón and Goethe to Rosetti, Maeterlinck, Dehmel and Yeats. The German settings of the mid-1900s date from Clarke’s student years (her earliest song is a version of Goethe’s Wandrers Nachtlied), with contemporary texts by Richard Dehmel evidently a particular favourite. They inhabit a post-Romantic soundworld, with hints of the Impressionist influence that was to become a hallmark of Clarke’s style. Nicholas Phan’s performances are highly persuasive, even if Whately and Rand’s unisons in the duet Nacht für Nacht could be tighter. From the same period, Maeterlinck’s Chanson (sung with great warmth by Whately) also demonstrates an assured young talent.

It is, however, the English-texted settings of the 1910s and 20s that really reveal a song composer of genius. Try the limpid textures of The Cloths of Heaven (Yeats, 1927), with Phan’s sensitively shaded voice accompanied by exquisitely delicate piano figuration from Tilbrook. John Masefield’s Twilight, set in 1925, receives a gently rapt performance by Whately. Yeats’s Down by the Salley Gardens is heard in two versions, one for voice and violin (Phan and Max Baillie), the other for voice and piano (Whately and Tilbrook), demonstrating the ingenuity of Clarke’s approach to accompaniments.

Whately is extremely compelling in her performance of The Seal Man, presented in a haunting arrangement for voice, viola and piano, and she also delivers captivating accounts of the extended ballad Binnorie (from c.1941) and The Tiger, a work whose very sinews pay tribute to the years in which Clarke spent grappling with its composition (Tilbrook wrings out all the darkness she can from the moody accompaniment).

There are too many other highlights to mention here, but the gentle waltz of Oh, Dreaming World (1905) and the hilarious The Aspidistra (1929, a parody of parlour songs of the sort Clarke will have known all too well, complete with ‘wrong’ notes) both deserve mention in passing. As do two sets of arrangements from the mid-1920s, Three Old English Songs (sung by Whately) and Three Irish Country Songs (Phan), and also three atmospheric settings from 1909–10 of translations of Chinese texts, exquisitely sung by Whately. Her accounts of two Blake settings, Cradle Song (1929) and Infant Joy (c.1913) are further standouts.

Phan’s voice occasionally develops a beat at the top end of his range, but his duets with Williams, especially the John Fletcher settings Away, Delights! and the Hymn to Pan with which the album closes, are particularly enjoyable. With full texts and useful commentary from Clarke’s great-nephew Christopher Johnson, this is a finely recorded and hugely impressive release which finally gives this hitherto relatively unsung songwriter her full due.

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R Clarke - The Complete Songs

In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day

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Contents

Works

Artists

Works

Artists

About

Sound/Video

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Europadisc Review